HN's ideal economist is Piketty: politically contentious and somewhat against the grain -- because, of course, software developers are good at everything, and non-economists chiding the economists must be right. (I'm surprised HN doesn't feature Steve Keen constantly)

Romer's work could be politically contentious if it wasn't so abstract and embedded in a history of technical economic ideas about development that way back when (in the Solow era) echoed the basic insights and biases of micro 101. Of course, HN (and everyone else) wants to have its own ideas about development and hamper on how "unrealistic" micro 101 is -- so development theory is never discussed.

Then there's charter cities, which is like Urbit for non-nerds.